Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:39:43 — 25.1MB)
Subscribe: RSS
The Shemittah (sabbatical year) is a seven-year cycle and holds obvious parallels to the Shabbat (Sabbath) and is supposed to draw your attention to it. Man works six days and rests on the seventh. Man is made from the dirt and the dirt is supposed to rest as well. Man and dirt are one and the same. When we abuse the seven-year cycle of the land, we are abusing ourselves.
When you make the land work on its shabbat, it’s an abuse of the land, just as a man making a maid or male servant work on the seventh-day Shabbat is abuse.
The 50th-year Yobel (Jubilee) is part of the pattern of rest and release. These cycles described in the Torah reading בהר Behar (“on the mountain,” Leviticus 25) were not invented by man. We are not in the habit of resting. We are driven to work, and gather wealth. We work to live, not live to work.
God’s intention is for us not to do that. That’s why He commands us to keep the seventh-day Sabbath, and that is why He also called for a rest for the land itself every seven years.
Modern commercial farmers do something called crop rotation, which is not the same thing. They fertilize the land, but they don’t really rest it.
In smaller farms, every year, they cycle through areas that are left fallow versus those that are cultivated. This is also not God’s plan.
If you cross seeds, you don’t get what you planted. If you do too much crossing, the results can be poisonous, particularly of squash.
The Yobel cycle comes on year 50. So on year 49 and 50, you have two years in a row when the land is supposed to lay fallow.
“And you shall count off for yourself seven rests of years, seven times seven years, and they shall be for you seven weeks of years―forty–nine years. And you shall proclaim with the sound of the trumpet throughout all your land, in the seventh month, on the tenth of the month. On the day of atonement you shall proclaim with the trumpet throughout all your land.” (Leviticus 25:8–9 New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS))
The years don’t start in the seventh month (September–October), but in the first month (March–April). But the announcement of the Jubilee gives time to prepare. You can plant between the seventh month and the first month leading up to year 7, 14, 21, … and 49. But once the Shemittah year starts, there is no further gathering of crops for commerce until the end of the Shemittah year.
God promised to bless the land’s produce leading up each Shemittah so everyone in the country will have enough food to last though the Shemittah time.
“But if you say, What shall we eat in this seventh year, if we do not sow or gather in our crop? I will also send my blessing to you in the sixth year, and it will yield its crop for three years.” (Leviticus 25:20–21 NETS)
The rules of the Shemittah do not apply to one’s small personal garden, but a reference to commercial farmers.
“And you shall proclaim with the sound of the trumpet throughout all your land, in the seventh month, on the tenth of the month. On the day of atonement you shall proclaim with the trumpet throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the year, the fiftieth year, and you shall proclaim release on the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a year of release; a signal this shall be for you, and each one shall depart to his possession, and each shall depart to his clan.” (Leviticus 25:9–10 NETS)
There seems to be a difference in wording between how Israelite bondservants are dealt with in Exodus versus Leviticus, but not exactly. The cycle of seven years for servitude is not seven years from the date of “purchase” but it is a set seven-year cycle.
“’If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years; but on the seventh he shall go out as a free man without payment. If he comes alone, he shall go out alone; if he is the husband of a wife, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall belong to her master, and he shall go out alone. But if the slave plainly says, “I love my master, my wife and my children; I will not go out as a free man,” then his master shall bring him to God, then he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him permanently.'” (Exodus 21:2–6 NASB)
Forever doesn’t mean forever, it basically means 50 years at the most. The “value” of the land and the people is calculated the same. Ultimately, this text teaches that both the people and the land belong to God, not to each other.
When the people of Israel did not keep the Shemittahs or Jubilees, they basically enslaved the land.
“Let not a person oppress his neighbor, and you shall fear the Lord your God; it is I who am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 25:17 NETS)
There’s always a way to freedom, always a way out because we are supposed to be slaves to God, not to anyone else. Just as if we are a slave to sin, we are not a slave to God but we can have freedom from sin, too.
How can gentile servants gain their freedom? What responsibility do the Jewish masters have to their gentile servants? The Jewish masters have a requirement, a duty to teach Torah to their gentile neighbors. If the gentile converts to Judaism, he is now an Israelite and has right to release in the Shemittah just as a native Israelite.
“And as for a male and female servant whom you may have from the nations that are around you―from them you shall acquire a male and female slave. Also from the sons of the resident aliens residing among you―from these and from their families who have been born in your land you shall acquire; let them be to you as a possession. And you shall distribute them to your children after you, and they shall be held in possession by you forever. But of your brothers the sons of Israel, each shall not abuse his brother with toil.” (Leviticus 25:44–46 NETS)
There are different instructions about the sale/lease of houses. We don’t put walls around our cities in this modern day. The closest equivalent in modern times are the city limits.
If a person sells their city house, they have a year to buy it back if they change their mind, no questions asked. If the original owner does not buy it back within a year, they release their title to that house permanently. Homes outside the boundary follow the jubilee rules.
The homes of Levites, whether in the city or in the country, always follow the rules of Jubilee.
What would happen to a Jewish person who sells himself to a Gentile who lives in the land of Israel?
If the Jewish person has family, such as a brother, or uncle, their obligation is to buy him back, even if the Jewish person, has voluntarily sold himself to a Gentile to worship other gods.
A Jewish person enslaved to a Gentile in the land has the responsibility to work hard and buy himself out of the situation as quickly as possible, not to merely wait for Shemittah releases.
If the Jewish slaves extended family do not have the means to buy him out immediately,
The family of the Jewish slave have the responsibility to get him free as quickly as possible.
Regardless, the Jewish slave would be released in the Jubilee year.
“I am the Lord your God. You shall make for yourselves nothing made by hand nor carved, neither erect a stele of your own, nor shall you place a stone as a look–out in your land, to do obeisance to it; it is I who am the Lord your God. You shall keep my sabbaths and be respectful of my sanctuaries; I am the Lord.” (Leviticus 26:1–2 NETS)
These physical Shemittah and Jubilee cycles are a physical manifestation of a spiritual ideal.
“And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?”
Yeshua answered them:
“’Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.’” (John 8:32–36 NASB)
Yeshua is the master, we are slaves. When we were slaves to sin, He bought us out and set us free from sin.
We see in the New Testament book of Philemon an example of how Paul thought of slavery. Philemon was the believer and the owner of slave named Onesimus. It appears that Onesimus runs away to Rome and meets with Paul. Sometime during this process, Paul converts Onesimus to belief in the Messiah. Paul tells Onesimus to return to Philemon and for Philemon to receive Onesimus, not a slave but as a believing slave in Christ. They are all slaves in Messiah and one of Messiah’s slave is not to mistreat another one of Messiah’s fellow slaves.
If Messiah is your master, Isaiah 61 tells us how Yeshua is going to rule over His people.
“‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to summon the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of retribution, to comfort all who mourn so that to those who mourn for Sion be given glory instead of ashes, oil of joy to those who mourn, a garment of glory instead of a spirit of weariness. They will be called generations of righteousness, a plant of the Lord for glory.
‘They shall build the desolate places of old; they shall raise up the former devastated places; they shall renew the desolate cities, places devastated for generations.
‘Aliens shall come, feeding your sheep, and foreigners as plowmen and vinedressers, but you shall be called priests of the Lord, ministers of God; you shall devour the strength of nations, and with their wealth you shall be admired. Thus they shall inherit the land a second time, and everlasting joy shall be above their head.
‘For I am the Lord, who loves righteousness and hates spoils obtained by injustice; I will give them their hard work righteously, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. And their offspring and their descendants shall be known among the nations; everyone who sees them shall acknowledge them, because these are an offspring blessed by God, and they will rejoice with rejoicing in the Lord. Let my soul be glad in the Lord, for he has clothed me with a garment of salvation and with a tunic of joy; he has put on me a headdress as on a bridegroom and adorned me with ornaments like a bride. And as the earth making its flowers grow, and as a garden its seeds, so the Lord will cause righteousness and gladness to spring up before all the nations.'” (Isaiah 61:1–11 NETS)
This shows us how we are to be good masters and how good of a Master our Messiah Yeshua is. We are to treat each other with the kindness Yeshua gives us.
Summary: Tammy.
Photo Credit: Fallow field near Campos Castilla, Spain by Freeimages.com/Juan Carlos Rodríguez.
Discover more from Hallel Fellowship
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.